Unable to hear the motor start up when winding it, the ingenious Richards would keep his second hand on the vehicle’s body and feel for the vibrations of the running motor.

He could then quickly jump into the vehicle and take a leisurely drive.

Mr Swan said it was a great novelty to be able to take a motor car ride back in those days.

He said whenever the family felt like a drive, his father would send one of Mr Swan’s older sisters to the general store to purchase a tin of petrol.

After pouring it into the motor and starting the car, the family would pile into the seats and drive the vehicle until it just ran out of petrol.

Then they would all push it home from wherever they ended up.

“But no one minded because we all enjoyed going for a ride in the car,” he remembers.

From the time he could walk he remembers being surrounded by the family’s droving trade.

He said his mother would even rest him as a baby on the front of the saddle as she rode the horse along.

And he spent much of his adult working life droving.

The biggest journey Mr Swan embarked on was a 15-week mammoth trip to move 2000 head of cattle through the Diamantina in the early 1950s.

He was working for a butcher in Cloncurry when he was offered the work.

He was able to name his price and came up with 75 pounds per week – a heady sum in those days.

He chose five fit and able men in Cloncurry – but admits many drovers were alcoholics and within only a few days of droving the group all wanted to return home for another drink.

He arranged for them to leave on the next mail truck that visited the site while he quickly arranged for five men to come down from Doomadgee and replace the group.

However, many of the group soon wanted to leave also and by the end of their journey only himself, his wife (who drove the truck behind the group and supplied the tucker) and a 65-year-old Aboriginal stockman from Doomadgee and two cattle dogs completed the journey.

He said having few people moving so many cattle proved difficult but it reaped its benefits in the finance stakes.

With only a trio people left on board they only have to share the huge sum of money between the three of them.

“I bought a brand new car with that money – I didn’t tell my wife I just went out and got it and surprised her,” he said.

As he reflects on those days he said it was a happy time and he feels overall he had lived a wonderful life and wouldn’t change a thing.

He said he saw a different side of Australia to many of those who lived in the cities.

There was no better example than when an accountant not used to the bush life once visited a drovers’ camp site overnight while Dick Swan was out on the road.

The next morning he told Mr Swan he did not get a wink of sleep that night.

He said the constant roaring and moaning of the cattle all night had kept him wide awake.

“I’d never even thought about it before,” he laughed.

“I’d been around it for so long I didn’t even notice the great big constant noise the steers were making.”

He admits it was a hard life but one well worth living.

Dick Swan had an unusual childhood - he was working from the time he could stand and as a result, he never attended a single day of schooling.

Even today, he is completely unable to read or write.

“But I can count money and that’s what is the most important – no one could ever short change me,” he laughs.

Dick Swan was born in Charleville about 87 years ago to a family already in the droving trade.

They were the days leading to the Great Depression when families went hungry and many bush people were forced to steal sheep and cattle from richer people’s properties just to gather enough food to survive.

And people always used whatever methods were available to them to earn money.

One unique method was where people would place bloodied sheep wool on the open ground while they hid behind a 400 gallon drum.

The “hunter” would wait until the crows landed on the bloody mess thinking it was a carcass before the person would leap from behind the drum and snatch the bird.

The captured crows could be sold to the local Chinese general store in town.

Mr Swan said at the time the Chinese brothers who ran the store told people they used the crow’s heads for ancient medicine rituals – however he suspects they also could have been eating them.

However, the hard times on the family improved and Mr Swan’s father was among the first in the Western Queensland to purchase a T-Model Ford.

There were no roads back then only paths created by teams of horses.

The only other person Mr Swan can remember who owned a motor vehicle at the time was “Deafy Richards” a local man who, as the name suggests, suffered from a hearing impairment.

He owned an old vehicle which the motorist needed to physically crank the motor to get it started.

Unable to hear the motor start up when winding it, the ingenious Richards would keep his second hand on the vehicle’s body and feel for the vibrations of the running motor.

He could then quickly jump into the vehicle and take a leisurely drive.

Mr Swan said it was a great novelty to be able to take a motor car ride back in those days.

He said whenever the family felt like a drive, his father would send one of Mr Swan’s older sisters to the general store to purchase a tin of petrol.

After pouring it into the motor and starting the car, the family would pile into the seats and drive the vehicle until it just ran out of petrol.

Then they would all push it home from wherever they ended up.

“But no one minded because we all enjoyed going for a ride in the car,” he remembers.

From the time he could walk he remembers being surrounded by the family’s droving trade.

He said his mother would even rest him as a baby on the front of the saddle as she rode the horse along.

And he spent much of his adult working life droving.

The biggest journey Mr Swan embarked on was a 15-week mammoth trip to move 2000 head of cattle through the Diamantina in the early 1950s.

He was working for a butcher in Cloncurry when he was offered the work.

He was able to name his price and came up with 75 pounds per week – a heady sum in those days.

He chose five fit and able men in Cloncurry – but admits many drovers were alcoholics and within only a few days of droving the group all wanted to return home for another drink.

He arranged for them to leave on the next mail truck that visited the site while he quickly arranged for five men to come down from Doomadgee and replace the group.

However, many of the group soon wanted to leave also and by the end of their journey only himself, his wife (who drove the truck behind the group and supplied the tucker) and a 65-year-old Aboriginal stockman from Doomadgee and two cattle dogs completed the journey.

He said having few people moving so many cattle proved difficult but it reaped its benefits in the finance stakes.

With only a trio people left on board they only have to share the huge sum of money between the three of them.

“I bought a brand new car with that money – I didn’t tell my wife I just went out and got it and surprised her,” he said.

As he reflects on those days he said it was a happy time and he feels overall he had lived a wonderful life and wouldn’t change a thing.

He said he saw a different side of Australia to many of those who lived in the cities.

There was no better example than when an accountant not used to the bush life once visited a drovers’ camp site overnight while Dick Swan was out on the road.

The next morning he told Mr Swan he did not get a wink of sleep that night.

He said the constant roaring and moaning of the cattle all night had kept him wide awake.

“I’d never even thought about it before,” he laughed.

“I’d been around it for so long I didn’t even notice the great big constant noise the steers were making.”